The Pirate Bay has been operating one of its original domains – thepiratebay.org – for well over 15 years. During that same period, it has also burned through countless others due to anti-piracy action all around the globe.
The Pirate Bay is also one of the most blocked platforms on the planet for the same reason, something that has led to the creation of hundreds of proxy sites, set up to facilitate access to the index, regardless of which official domain is in use.
Last evening the operator of a site that indexes links to some of these proxies told TorrentFreak that their owners had noticed that The Pirate Bay's Onion site had been down for several hours, which is unusual. After further investigation, it was discovered that the site had switched from the extremely messy uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion to piratebayztemzmv.onion.
Accessible via the Tor browser, for example, Onion domains grant access to the so-called 'dark web', which is a fancy way of describing sites and services that aren't visible using a normal search engine or accessible by regular means. In the case of TPB, being hidden inside the Tor network also provides extra security for the raid and lawsuit-prone index.
While there has been no official announcement from TPB's operators about the Onion domain switch, the new address can now be seen when hovering over the 'Tor' link on the site. Exactly why the site's operators made the change isn't entirely clear, however.
The new Onion domain is certainly easier to read than the old one, but still not easy to remember. That being said, it is an improvement over its predecessor and now is probably a very good time to get everyone familiar with it.
As reported here recently, the Internet Society is in the process of selling the Public Interest Registry which currently controls The Pirate Bay's .org domain. As a result, there are concerns that the new owners may throw the infamous domain overboard on copyright grounds.
If that does indeed happen, the Onion domain will certainly come in handy, as will the hundreds of pre-existing proxy sites currently doing a dance around dozens of blockades, all around the world.
Last month Canada's Federal Court approved the first piracy blockade in the country.
Following a complaint from major media companies Rogers, Bell and TVA, the Court ordered several major ISPs to block access to domains and IP-addresses of the pirate IPTV service GoldTV.
A few days after the order was issued the first blockades were active. These prevent GoldTV customers from accessing the IPTV portal directly, as intended. As we've seen in the past, however, not everyone affected is giving up that easily.
Faced with the blocking error, many users went looking for alternatives. Through various public forums, people asked for advice, which was never far away. At the same time, it appears that GoldTV's operators also took action.
Instead of relying on the blocked domains, GoldTV is now accessible through a new portal, using a fresh domain name. Instead of the edge.tm URL, several resellers are now publicly directing users to the beex.me domain, which isn't blocked, yet.
Whether that will last is doubtful, as rightsholders are also keeping a close eye on these changes. They previously added edge.tm to the complaint when GoldTV switched, and are likely to add the new domain to the blocklist as well.
The Federal Court order allows the rightsholders to request ISPs to update their blocklists. To do so, they have to file an affidavit. Internet providers then have ten business days to file any objections. If there are none, the Court may grant the requested update without any hearings.
This means that, in theory, this cat-and-mouse game can continue for months. This is similar to what we have seen with site blocking efforts in other countries. However, there are other workarounds being discussed as well.
IPTV Global Server, which describes itself as a GoldTV reseller, has created a detailed circumvention guide for customers. Aside from updating the URL, the company points out that switching to a VPN is a more permanent solution.
"As evident in the court case itself, bypassing this block is not difficult, and simply requires you to use a VPN when accessing Gold (Global) services. Alternatively the host can change the portal URL at anytime to bypass the block," Global writes.
The reseller links to two VPN services which it has "partnered" with and provides affiliate links, which help the company to bring in some extra revenue as well.
While Global's guide is useful to blocked GoldTV users, the company's decision to create a URL that directly links to the latest access portal could potentially result in its own domain name being blocked as well.
The court order allows any (sub)domain to be added to the blocklists, as long as its sole or predominant use is to facilitate access to GoldTV's services. While a generic VPN wouldn't immediately fit that category, a dedicated 'circumvention' guide likely would.
At the time of writing it's unclear whether any of the rightsholders have already submitted proposed additions to the blocklist.
What is clear, however, is that the blocking case is far from over. Last week, Internet provider TekSavvy filed an appeal. Among other things, the company argued that the Court's order undermines the open Internet to "protect the profits and business models of a handful of powerful media conglomerates."
Whenever Library Genesis (Libgen) or Sci-Hub hit the headlines, what tends to follow is a fracturing of opinion on where these sites sit in the piracy landscape.
Both are best known for their massive archives of scientific articles and research papers. They are also notable for their absolute commitment to the spread of knowledge for the betterment of society as a whole. This means that even some otherwise staunch opponents of piracy pause for thought.
While huge publishing companies want them gone, support for these platforms among the knowledge-thirsty can be robust. Just over a week ago, the passion for keeping Libgen alive became evident in a Reddit thread (posted by a user known as 'shrine') titled 'Charitable seeding for nonprofit scientific torrents'
"Libgen is a 33 terabyte scientific library with 2.4 million free books covering science, engineering, and medicine," 'shrine' began.
"It's the largest free library in the world, servicing tens of thousands of scientists and medical professionals around the world who live in developing countries that can't afford to buy books and scientific journals. There's almost nothing else like this on Earth – they're using torrents to fulfill World Health Organization and U.N. charters."
However, the torrents used by Libgen were not in good shape so 'shrine' began a movement to boost the quality of their swarms. The project was quickly spotted and then supported by two companies (Seedbox.io and UltraSeedbox.com) that offer 'seedboxes', effectively server-based torrent clients with plenty of storage space and bandwidth available – perfect for giving swarms a boost.
The project gained plenty of traction and as a follow-up thread details, considerable success. Today we catch up with 'shrine' for some history, background information, and an interesting status report.
"Ironically this all started when I saw the TorrentFreak article about [Libgen] mirrors getting taken down. I immediately decided I wanted to find a way to preserve and protect the collection," 'shrine' says.
"I started out, but realized that the Plex server in my living room wouldn't be enough to back up the largest free library in the world. That's when I wrote my plea to /r/datahoarder hoping for a few guys to help out. Once the project exploded my role since then has been coordinating the hundreds of seed donations out of my Google Doc and answering as many questions as I can."
Shrine is completely unconnected to the Libgen site but says he's been a user for years. Before his project began he didn't have a clear idea of how the site operated or what it took to keep it online but he's now focused on two primary goals – back up Libgen and distribute the data so that people can find new ways to utilize it.
"The collection we're seeding now is 32TB (18%) of [Libgen's] total collection, so it's just the first step in preserving the project," he says, pointing to Libgen's stats page.
We asked 'shrine' if any stats on swarm strengths were taken when the project began, so a comparison can be made today. He told us that an index for the collection didn't even exist a week ago, so planning and coordination was difficult. However, some stats are available.
"The first thing I did was find a way to scrape the torrents to motivate seeders and track progress. I started collecting data on November 30th using a very cool open source indexer on GitLab," he reveals.
Project data (Nov 30 to Dec 4)
While the previously-mentioned seedbox suppliers provided a huge boost to the project, there are plenty of anonymous donors and supporters behind the scenes too, even people who had no previous experience of using BitTorrent.
"I am overjoyed with the outpour of support. I have PMs from people who've never torrented before, have 1GB to spare, and want to know the best torrent client," 'shrine' notes.
"Scientists in the Reddit threads are sharing stories of how LibGen made their research possible. Unnamed cloud providers have pledged 100TB allocation on their servers. The response has been overwhelmingly positive from everyone."
Although 'shrine' regularly uses the term "we" in respect of seeding, he points out that he's the project evangelist and there's "nothing but Linux ISOs" on his own server. Nevertheless, the project has now turned into a movement, one that could have a profound effect on the overall free availability of scientific research.
"I only know there is no way to take the books back once they've been seeded. It's a permanent library card for the world," 'shrine' concludes.
Update: Seedbox.io reports they have some significant additional support for the project.
"Alongside our wonderful provider at NFOrce.nl we are going to sponsor up an entire server which will be big enough to hold the entire libgen project in full. Lets get this thing well seeded for the future so others can benefit from it!"
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